Hi everyone
If you're able to provide any advice on this, that would be fantastic!
We are a company of around 30, and have a number of Recruitment Consultants, along with an Administration Team of 2. The administrative processes need re-vamping as they’re no longer efficient – the last time they were reviewed was around 4 years ago, and times have dramatically changed with technology etc. in that time. The Consultants tend to be quite self-sufficient nowadays, unlike many years ago i.e. sending their own temporary worker contracts out, typing up CVs, etc. I will be meeting with the Management Team in the very near future to discuss what would work best for them, and how the Admin Team can best support them. However, my concern is that the Admin Team’s duties could either decrease quite significantly or change if we remove some and/or add some. Redundancy isn’t a factor currently as this would be an absolute last resort.
I want to ensure the Admin Team remain engaged and don’t panic, however I imagine they will naturally feel uneasy about the potential changes which could be made to their roles, plus from previous experience, I predict some attitude/behavioural changes and push back to the new and improved processes due to the change element.
As HR professionals, what would you advise to be the best approach? This is new to us as an organisation and I haven’t had to deal with this before personally either so any guidance would be gratefully received to ensure we follow the correct procedure.
The job description is mentioned in the contract, however on the job descriptions themselves I can’t see any clauses stating we can amend the duties at our discretion. The only potentially relevant clause in the contract under ‘duties’ is below:
The duties of the Employee shall include, but will not be limited to, those duties specified in the Employee’s job description as amended from time to time.
Many thanks in advance,
Adele
Replies
Sounds like you have some interesting times ahead. Basically you will need to engage the admin team to the new ways of working and involving them throughout the change process will be key. However that said it can sometimes be a case of turkeys voting for Christmas and sometimes those in the roles either identify the best way of doing something or can't see past how they currently undertake work. If you really want to reassure them then you may choose to mar a commitment upfront that this won't result in redundancies but if you are not 100% on this then obbviously you can't. You may want to think about what is in it for them so for example the role may move from an admin focus to say customer engagement or relationship management and there may be some New skills or areas for development available.
I would not resort to what is in the contract as at the end of the day you need their buy in and words in a contract don't achieve that and as I always say anything is possible with mutual achievement. :-)
I am sure there will be others on the Community who have tackled a similar challenge it would be great to hear from you and your experiences.
All the best
Saah